Philip Avery and I visited a large book/vintage computer-electronics "garage" sale in Wanganui yesterday morning. It seemed to be the contents of someone who had hoarded anything related to 1980s electronics they could find with heaps of monitors, fax machines, old video recorders, mice, keyboards, PC cards/motherboards, video games machines and a number of computers. The latter included an XT clone, a couple of Amigas, Vic 20, C-64, a couple of Apple IIes, a Sinclair Spectrum amongst others. Most were very dirty, but I could see the potential after a good clean (or dishwasher episode)!

I didn't expect to buy anything, as I've got most of what I've got now. However, the items were dirt cheap and might be useful as parts and/or as restoration projects. Consquently I found I couldn't leave them sitting there. I ended up with..

The Sinclair Spectrum (it works!)The Vic 20 plus a game cart. (also works!)The Commodore 64 (not tested yet)A very crappy IBM Model M PS/2 keyboard (but it gave me the parts I wanted)Two Apple IIes with two drives each (one is a genuine Disk II drive which will match the one already on my Apple II+..none of the Apple stuff is tested yet)An IBM Mono Monitor for the PC/XT (Covered with birdshit. Not tested)

All for $26. Philip scored himself a green-screen Dick Smith System 80 monitor for $1.

The Commodore 64 does not work. It was in bad shape...keys were missing and the case was discoulored and even melted in some places. Nothing appears on the screen.

I picked it up in the hope the board was working so I had as a source of "known good" spare chips. As it is, I don't know what's wrong and none of the ICs are socketed so it's of of limited use to anyone really.

The Apples have cleaned up quite well. One case is a bit skanky with some corrosion on the bottom but the other is very good...actually better than my existing IIe so a case swap might be in order. Just tested the motherboards today. Neither work and both the PSUs issued smoke after a minute of being on (expected, and easily fixed). One board shows a screen of white horizontal bars (no gaps between them and some flickering squares on the image), the other has a blown cap which may be why it doesn't go.

Neither respond to the diagnostic keypresses on startup.

I believe at least one working Apple IIe can be salvaged out of the two...perhaps even both. It's a long term project though...I've got a bit competing for my time at the moment.

A pain indeed. I've kept the board anyway and it's now in the spares box. Problem is with a non-working non-diagnosed board is that it could be ANY chip, so if you do use it as a source of spare parts for a fault, who'se to say the IC you labouriously desolder from it is in a working condition anyway. On a spare rainy evening I might have a crack at seeing if I can ID the fault.

The VIC board on the other hand seems to work well. It's in very good condition so I think I'll use it to substitute the board in my Collection VIC, which doesn't look half as pretty due to fixes done when I first started collecting. I was not as deft with the soldering iron then. . More importantly, this new board seems to recognise cartridges whereas my existing board does not! I only realised this when I tried the cart obtained in the haul. So a hidden fault existed which is now exposed.

Yes, missing several key caps, not keys. In fact missing ALL key caps now because I intend to remove them tonight.

However, it is also missing one whole key. The other keys seem fine. No cord, as I mentioned.

Sure I can post on the remains if you really want it. It was about to be tossed but if it can be useful to someone then I'm happy to pass it on. Send your address by email or private message on this forum.

Changed the shorted cap on the Apple IIe (enhanced) board. It still didn't work but at least now I had some video. I soon found the problem. A dead 6503 CPU. With a substitute it works just fine.

The straight Apple IIe is proving to be more problematic even though more chips are socketed. All bar one socketed IC verify ok. There is a socketed 74LS154N I didn't have a substitute for. However I suspect the problem is either a RAM chip (nothing is seen with piggybacking) or a soldered in logic chip. I'm going to have to wait until I borrow Philip Avery's scope again before making any progress on this one.

I'm very pleased I grabbed these units now. My two collection machines are an Apple IIe Platinum and a Apple IIe (Enhanced). However the latter is really a Platinum board in a IIe (Enhanced) case. Now I can insert a proper IIe enhanced board in there and keep the Platinum board as a spare. Also the top lid on the IIe (enhanced) sustained some label fogging when I first started to experiment with Retr0bright. I now have a clean lid without a fogged lable I can replace it with.

A report on the Apple IIes. I've made progress but I've come to a grinding halt due to a lack of resources. Hopefully someone can help.

The apple IIe (enhanced) board is up and working. Two short circuited caps was the problem here.

The Apple IIe board (the second Apple) does not have a clock signal on the CPU. This is why it's not firing. However, I can't trace this back as I don't have a circuit diagram for these PAL "International" Apple IIes. I have plenty of diagrams and literature for the Apple IIe (SAMS computer facts, Understanding the Apple IIe) but they all have circuit and layout diagrams which relate just to the U.S. version. The PAL international version is very different. It's not just the layout of the chips. Different ICs are used.

If anyone can point me to a PAL circuit diagram (or just knows what to check) I'll be grateful

Well, I've gone as far as I can go on these Apples IIes for now. I'm quite please with my $10 investment but it could have been better.

My Apple IIe stock before this episode was

(a) A nice IIe Plantinum and (b) A platinum board machine in a IIe enhanced case, the lable which was a little fogged with an early retrobrighting attempt.

It is now:

(a) A nice IIe Platinum(b) A nice IIe Enhanced(c) A non-working IIe (Standard) which I am determined to have going someday. I've been working on this in the last few days and have replaced most of the logic chips. No luck. I now suspect it's a (soldered in *sigh*) RAM issue. I'll leave it for a while. I would like to add this third Apple to the collection once it's going. It also needs a replacement keyboard driver.

I now have some IIe spare parts, A non-working Platinum motherboard missing a CPU and keyboard driver chip (see below). I also have a spare keyboard. I'll keep these.

Surplus to requirements is one rather knocked-about case with no speaker. If anyone thinks they might want this let me know. If no one wants it (you just need to pay shipping and a little bit of beer money ($5) for packing) it will be dumped.

Here is what was wrong with the IIe (Enhanced) - A non-working CPU (65C05). I had to swap with the spare parts platinum board - Two capacitors were shorted and needed replacement - Two filter caps blew and needed replacement - The keyboard driver IC also stopped working when I was testing the keyboard. Again, I had to swap with the spare parts platinum board.

The Apple IIe (Standard) also has a crook keyboard driver IC. Something else stops it from booting but as yet I still don't know what. I've replaced and swapped out practically every IC except the RAM. I suspect it's the latter by elimination!

With the weather being conducive to working in computer shack, I've managed to solve the issue on that Apple IIe (standard). Not one, but at least two, (possibly) more RAM chips.

Now all I need is that keyboard driver chip and I'll have two wholly working Apple IIes in pretty good shape. I'll then probably sell the 1984 Apple II (enhanced) as, apart from the case, it's very close to the Platinum in nature. The 1982 standard Apple IIe on the other hand, is different enough to be worth keeping for the collection.